convocation & jazz mass - redroof.ca

august 2016

convocation & jazz mass

the newsletter of THE CHURCH OF ST. JOHN THE EVANGELIST

Montreal, Quebec

The evangelisT augusT ⁙ 2016 32

Sunday 3rd July was the first Jazz Mass at St. John the Evangelist, a brilliantly sunny day for the congre-

gation of over 110 to experience a brilliantly organized Jazz Mass by Father Alain, the Cel-ebrant. The Gospel Hymns were sung fairly well by a Congregation steeped in Anglican Hymnody, who freed themselves to sway with the Gospel Rhythms. The Mass setting was the Little Jazz Mass by Bob Chilcott, and Fed-erico improvised the accompaniment of the Propers. The Choir threw themselves into the singing with a double bass, drums and timpani, and saxophone accompaniment. The Address

was by Professor Norman Cornett who dis-cussed the Gospel in detail. We had a fine sax-ophone recital from the Pulpit by Joel Miller which gave the right Jazz mood to the Congre-gation and keened as it should.

Your Editor was most excited because for eleven years he has tried to get St Johns to have a Jazz Mass. It was a superbly brilliant and joyous Mass. 3

This page, top right: Professor Cornett at the pulpit. Bottom left: Joel Miller delivers his solo.

Bottom right: The Celebrant Father Alain with Mother Wendy and Tyson Røsberg During Communion

The Jazz MassBy tony whitehead, editor • photos By janet Best

This page, top: Conor O’Neill and Claude Vieilleux (basses); Dwain Richardson (tenor);

Aura West, Catherine Murray, and Helen Tucker (altos/mezzos); Kristal Calvert, Rebecca Bain, and

Angèle Trudeau (sopranos). Accompanied by Pierre Cartier (double bass) and Valérie Lacombe (drums).


the rector’s charge

Summer Praise By fr. keith schmidt

Oh! Ye Winter and Summer bless ye the Lord, praise him and magnify him forever.

Benedicite

Most people probably find it eas-ier to “Bless” the Lord in sum-mer than in a winter blizzard.

Having said this, summer church attendance in Canada is not known to be particularly high. In Montreal and in the area of the Quartier des Spectacle in particular, in Summer Fes-tival season. As we move into vacation mode please don’t forget that while Masses during the Summer are simpler and shorter, they

still need your sup-port. This year the Nativity of St John the Baptist is on Fri-day June 24, Mass at 10:30 am and the Feast of the Assumption is on Monday August 15, Mass at 5:45 pm.We

will be moving our Weekday Masses to the Jubilee Chapel beginning sometime in mid June.

July and August in Canada is a time for refreshment and relaxation from the routine work schedule. In Creation, God rested on the Seventh day and called it the Sabbath, a

time to rest. As you enjoy your Sabbath Sea-son this Summer, take in the beauty of God’s creation and the world around and remember Him who created and redeemed it.

I spent a week travelling route 132 from Montreal’s South Shore and around the Gaspé. The scenery of the Gaspé and the Matapedia valley was extraordinary. The many “Chapelle de Procession” and “Les Croix de Chemin” that dot the Quebec countryside were impressive as well. One of the sad aspects of this of course was the near impossibility of visiting many of the Churches en route because everything must be kept locked these days. Yet these won-derful buildings are reminders of the Faithful-ness of Generations before and a continuing inspiration to us today.

All ye Works of the Lord, bless ye the Lord, praise and magnify him for ever. 3

Yours in Christ,Fr Keith

Below left: Father on a Mountain. Above: A Gothic Chapel

The Convocation of the Montreal Diocesan Theological College was held in our Church on Monday

2nd. May, 2016 at 7:30 pm. The President was the Bishop of Montreal, The Right Rev’d Mary Irwin-Gibson and the Principal of the College The Rev’d Donald L. Boisvert.

The Procession of the President, Princi-pal, Faculty, Governors, Committee Mem-bers, Academic Visitors, Graduands and Students convened in the Church Hall where Gowns and Hoods were adjusted the Procession called into line and entered the Church singing “Ave Virgo Virginum”.

The College Chaplain, The Rev’d Jennifer Bourque said the College Collect. Our Rector The Rev’d Keith A. Schmidt then welcomed

the academic life

Convocationreport By the editor

all to the Convocation on behalf of the Parish.Scripture Readings were followed by The

Chaplain leading Prayers.The Principal then gave his Report and

The anthem O Sing Joyfully by Adrian Batten (1591–1637) followed and at last we got to the Awards to our Parishioners.

The Student Academic Prizes were intro-duced by the Principal:

Tyson Røsberg won two Prizes: The Rev. Canon Dr. Lettie James Prize in Feminist or Pastoral Theology, for his essay Seeking to Define the Incomprehensible: Gender-Bend-ing, Feminism, and the Holy Trinity, and The Bishop Russel Brown Award, for having made the greatest contribution to the life of the Community during the Year. This was voted


by the Student body.Jonathan Widell was then presented with

The College Prize for Overall Academic Excellence

The Hymn Liebster Jesu was sung and we got to the Degrees and Diplomas.

The Education for Ministry Diploma: Rose-Mary Brinkema was presented by Afra Saskia Tucker, Diocesan Coordinator for the EfM Programme.

She had spent over a decade with Rose-Mary as a fellow Parishioner at St. John the

Evangelist, where RoseMary is Rector’s War-den. Her hard work and commitment, was evident in her pursuit of Theological Stud-ies over the past four years in the EfM pro-gramme. Around the Parish, everyone knows RoseMary. Her sense of adventure and curios-

ity have made her a known and trusted quan-tity to groups and performers in our neigh-bourhood Quartier des Spectacles; her tireless presence and big heart have served her well as a volunteer at St. Michael’s Mission. She would like to think that the course of EfM, the readings, discussions, and theological reflec-tions had enriched RoseMary’s experience of these Ministries.

Glen Marcotte was introduced for his The Education for Ministry Diploma by The Rev’d Karla Holmes B. Mus, Bed, MA, Dip. Min

who surveyed his achievements.After the Anthem Come, My Way, My

Truth, My Life with words by George Herbert (1593–1633) and Music by Alexander Brent Smith (1889–1950), The Honorary Degree of Doctor of Divinity (honoris causa) was Con-ferred on our Friend and Colleague, the Retired Principal of the Montreal Diocesan Theological College, The Rev’d Canon Dr. John Simons.

He was presented by The Rev’d Prof. Patri-cia G. Kirkpatrick: In Baie Comeau he was

Above: Tyson receives his Awards from the Presi-dent the Bishop of Montreal, The Right Rev’d Mary

Irwin-Gibson. Top right: The President presents Canon Simons with his Honorary Degree. Bottom left: The Rev’d Karla Holmes, RoseMary, Afra, and the Presi-

dent. Bottom right: Jonathan and the President. Oppo-site: Glen Marcotte with the President, and Rev’d Karla


I am a child of the Lièvre River Valley. My home town of Masson is at the con-fluence of the Lièvre and the Ottawa

River of which it is a major tributary. There is little agricultural land in the area; the town is an industrial rather than a farming com-munity. The main industry is forestry, from pine/oak square wood in the 1820s, to spruce planks in the 1860s, to present-day fir pulp wood in the sulfite paper mill; but also mines

(phosphate, mica, feldspar, dolomite . . .), as well as hydropower. The valley was for a long time dominated by the James Maclaren Co. who ruled over it as the Scottish lairds they were. The sequence of high waterfalls on the river did not lend itself to boat travel, and the company always opposed the railroad. The upper river region thus remained undevel-oped, despite earlier hopes in the 19th century. The population is an interesting mixture of

educated in French, baptised in the local Angli-can Church. His upbringing was a dual Cul-tural format giving constant strength and fero-cious dedication to contextualizing that has been John’s vocation in life and as Principal of the Montreal Diocesan Theological College from 1991 to 2015. Honours Degree in Philoso-phy and Theology from Bishops University, an Advanced Degree in Sacred Theology at Trin-ity College Toronto and a PhD at Georgetown University in Washington.

As Principal he fought the Administration who wished to weaken Theology as a Faculty.

Canon Simons then gave his Convoca-tion address: Exsultet. He said that St. Paul, chose one of the fruits of the Spirit as joy, yet Christians rarely mention it! Therefore Canon Simons made it his focus! Was it because Joy is a natural emotion, a passion of the soul from ancient times? However joy is a major theme

of the biblical narrative.According to John, the Word-made-Flesh,

should join in one the joy that belongs to God with the joy that God inspires in the human soul. “I have said these things to you that my joy may be in you and your joy may be full.”

He said joy, is not an episodic and subjec-tive emotion, but our affective attuning to the renewal of creation promised in the Gospel and achieved in principle through the resur-rection of Jesus Christ. Christian joy accepts, indeed inhabits, our essential vulnerability and is liturgically mediated. It is therefore a rich repertoire of expectancy, wonder, indig-nation, sorrow, triumph and laughter!

The College Hymn Pro Christo et Ecclesia was then sung and the Faculty, Guests and the Academic Officers and President filed out to Mendelssohn’s Sonata V, op. 65, Allegro maestoso.

A reception followed in our parish hall. 3

Above: A joyous reception

memoir

The Summers’ of Our Ladypeter harper


Mother of God (deipara, theotokos). The bishop had agreed to come and bless it, on condition it were “decent”. A first painting com-missioned in 1895 burned with the first church in 1902 and was replaced by a new one painted locally by the rector’s niece. The devotion to the nursing Mother has been maintained to this day by the Servantes de Jésus-Marie, an order of enclosed nuns founded in the par-

ish in 1894 by the first rector, Father Mangin (1889–1896). Their special ministry, in imita-tion of that of Mary, is the nurture of Jesus in the Reserved Sacrament by perpetual ado-ration and the spiritual support of priests (as representatives of Jesus) by their life of prayer, work, and sacrifice. Mary in her motherly role is central to their spirituality: “In Bethlehem, she breast-fed the Victim, on Calvary, she offered the Victim . . . in her double priestly role.”

The emphasis on the nurturing Virgin influenced much our parish life. Motherhood was a special concern of the fourth curé, Father Lombard (1934–1966) —“il vénérait les mères”. He kept close watch on the reproductive lives of his flock. When I was born, an only child after three years of marriage, his comment was

“on l’attendait celui-là” and a frequent query to

women in the confessional was “T’empêches pas la famille, au moins?” He organised each year a great feast to honour the mothers of the parish on Mothers’ Day: a solemn high mass with full choir and polyphonic music (“messe en parties”) with an appropriate long sermon extolling Mary and motherhood. In the evening, all the parish crowded into the parish hall for speeches, songs, short plays and “tableaux vivants”— a recent mother was chosen to present her first baby to her peers to encourage them along in their duty.

Next to my childhood church (actually the third, an ugly hall-chapel used from 1930 to 1960 after the second church burned down with half the village), there was a wooded grove with footpaths enclosed by a cob-ble-stone fence topped by blocks of white crys-talline dolomite. This “park” was the work of Fr. Lombard, a French priest of alpine peasant stock and boundless physical energy. It con-tained a shrine to Our Lady of Fatima with the life-size characteristic statue at the foot of which were kneeling statues of the three chil-dren, Lucia, Jacinta and Francisco, to whom the Virgin had appeared. North of the grove, there was the usual large statue of the Sacred Heart on a pedestal set up in the 1910s when it was commonplace to thus dedicate parishes. South of the grove, along the provincial high-way, there was a Calvary, a large crucifix with life-size statues of Our Lady and Saint-John.

South of the church in a small depres-sion crossed by a stream, an elaborate grotto

Gaelic Scots, English Protestants, French and Irish Catholics, and German Lutherans and is largely bilingual.

The French established a number of set-tlements along the river, mostly under the impulse of Father François-Régis Michel (1828–1910), a Frenchman ordained in Ottawa and long-time rector of the core parish in Buckingham. This old generation of celibate French priests brought with them a very strong devotion to Our Lady, no doubt kindled by a similar affection for their mothers. This is reflected in the names given to the parishes established upriver, from Notre-Dame-des-Neiges in my hometown of Masson, upstream to Notre-Dame-du-Laus, Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde (Val-des-Bois), Notre-Dame-de-la-Salette, Notre-Dame-de-Pontmain, Notre-Dame-de-Fourvière (Mont-Laurier), and Notre-Dame-du-Saint-Sacrement (Ferme Neuve). The Irish who settled generally away from the river on the scarce arable patches added Our Lady of Knock (Mayo) and Our Lady of Victory (Buckingham). The Lièvre Valley is thus truly the Valley of Our Lady.

The devotion to Mary had been much promoted and defended by Saint Alphon-sus Maria de Liguori (+1787), an Italian Redemptorist bishop and moral theologian, who wrote extensively on the glories of Mary and the devotion to her. He advocated for the truly devout the so-called “Total Dona-tion” in which a person remitted all the mer-its and indulgences he/she had accumulated

during a lifetime of devotion into the hands of the Blessed Mother, who could dispose of them at her convenience. The person thus exposed him-/herself to a lengthened stay in purgatory to the benefit of others. Our third rector, Fr. Routhier (1897–1934), had made such a remittance in his will to our astonish-ment, admiration, and indeed terror; he had declared himself her slave. He prayed all his life to die on a feast-day of the Virgin; he died on St. Cecilia’s Day, pretty close. During the 19th century, the multiplication of apparitions and shrines, the increase of pilgrimages with the expansion of railroads, and the multiplica-tion of religious orders dedicated to the Vir-gin led to an unprecedented development in Marian devotion.

My own town of Masson is dedicated to Notre-Dame-des-Neiges; the title refers to the Roman Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore. The dedication feast is on August 5th and recalls the miracle of snow falling in mid-sum-mer in the 4th century Rome to mark the position on Esquiline Hill where Our Lady wanted her church to be built. Each year in Rome the event is commemorated by a “snow-fall” of white rose petals from the ceiling of the basilica during the Mass — I witnessed this spectacular event in 2001.

In my parish, there was over the altar a large painting of Our Lady of the Snows breast-feeding the Holy Child — after all, the designation is associated with Mary being declared by the Council of Ephesus (449)

This “park” was the work of Fr. Lombard, and contained a shrine to Our Lady of Fatima, at the foot of which were kneeling statues of the three children.


(Grotte de la Victoire, inaugurated in 1944) represented the apparitions of Our Lady to Bernadette Soubirous in Lourdes; the stream recalled the “gave” of Lourdes. It was meant to be a pilgrimage centre for the region. Its greatest moment of glory came in 1947 dur-ing the Great Marian Congress of Ottawa organized by Archbishop Alexandre Vachon. This involved a long procession in which the statue of Notre-Dame-du-Cap was driven on

a float from Cap-de-la-Madeleine to Ottawa with stops all along the way — it culminated in celebrations at Landsdowne Park presided over by cardinal James McGuigan as papal del-egate. The float stopped at the Masson grotto to a great concourse of local people; the young women of the parish all dressed in white to greet her.

The wooden grove was cut down for the building of the beautiful fourth church in

1960 and the grotto fell into disrepair. And now the church is closed and for sale; all that is left is the painting of Our Lady some-where . . . and the Calvary along the highway. Materials from the old church were used to build a chapel at Fr. Lombard’s cottage at Half Moon Lake upriver — it was aptly called the Ave Maria Chapel.

Thus surrounded by images and titles of Our Lady, our devotions were particularly spread throughout the

summer season. Winter had been spent with the Christmas-Lent-Easter cycles; the sum-mer was free to be consecrated to Mary. It all started with the Annunciation on March 25th, though this feast tended to be obscured by the tail end of the Easter-Pentecost season.

The first great Marian event was the Month of May dedicated to Our Lady which was marked with devotions every evening at 7 pm in the church which were well attended. They generally consisted of the Rosary (5 dec-ades), a pious reading from the pulpit gener-ally about one of the apparitions of Our Lady (Lourdes, Fatima, La Salette . . . a different one every year) and a short Benediction (an open tabernacle and a blessing with the cibo-rium). In school, we brought flowers to deco-rate Mary’s statue in the hall, some violets but mostly trilliums in full bloom at the time (but short-lived as cut flowers); later in the month, there were apple blossoms, lilacs, lilies of the valley, and bleeding hearts (“coeurs de Marie”,

obviously). We sang our favorite canticles: « C’est le mois de Marie. C’est le mois le plus beau. À la Vierge chérie, Disons un chant nou-veau. » and « Les saints et les anges En chœurs glorieux Chantent vos louanges, O Reine des cieux. Ave, ave, ave Maria! »

Spring was a time of pilgrimages. The favorite destination in our parish was the shrine of Notre-Dame-de-Lourdes in Rigaud, about 100 km away. I remember going there as a child on a trip organized by the good Broth-ers as an end of the year reward for mass serv-ers and choristers. The highlight of the day was a visit to the nearby “Devil’s Garden”— a large moraine field of stones rounded and deposited by the glaciations; it is also known as “le champ de patates” which legend said was the potato field turned to stone because the impious farmer persisted in tilling it on Sundays. A moral warning there. My most vivid recollection, however, is of bringing back home a red eft (a juvenile Eastern newt) in my lunch box. So much for a journey of devotion.

The dedication festival of Our Lady of the Snows was celebrated on August 5th, with much more solemnity in the earlier years — they even fired an old canon in front of the church for the occasion. There was a hymn composed for the feast, but it is long forgotten, and rightly so because it was pure doggerel. “Reine du ciel, part de mon hérit-age, Calice du breuvage immortel, Enivre-moi d’amour et sois mon doux partage, Toujours jusques au ciel.”


Above: Nina and Gomez climbing l’étagère

this lovely life

The Summer of Love

a light-hearted seasonal reflection By mtr wendy telfer

Jesus said, I came that (you) may have life, and have it abundantly. ( John 10:10). For Canadians, summer is

the season of abundant life. For Canadian Christians, summer is illumined by both the light of the sun and the light of Christ, whose resurrection is usually celebrated in closer proximity to summer than it was this year.

Many of us are old enough to remember the Summer of Love. In 1967 people gath-ered in San Francisco to celebrate peace, love and understanding. Here in Montréal we celebrated Expo ’67, the world fair. I say “we” because it marked my first visit to the city which is now my home. I travelled by car from Toronto with my parents. My only memory is of the enormous pink stuffed poodle that my father won at the midway. Fluffy, the name which popped into my six-year-old imagina-tion, was considerably bigger than I was. The two of us filled the better part of a double bed during an overnight stop on the way home.

Nearly fifty years later I am celebrating a rather different summer of love. I read recently that a move to another city is a kind of rebirth. As I explore Montréal I give thanks to God for

the new and abundant life that surrounds me. It is a time to marvel at the miraculous

transformation of bare trees and dead-look-ing earth into a profusion of colours and scents. Spring does not exist in Gaspé, so for the first time in four years I am wander-ing about dreamily, stopping to inhale the aroma of lilacs and honeysuckle and roses, and to recall the names of perennials. The sad-looking tree in front of my building was removed and replaced with a Japanese lilac on the verge of blossoming. When it reaches its full height the squirrels will once again have access to my front balcony — and to my garbage. On Sunday I was awakened by the cries of raccoons so there may be competi-tion for table scraps. Urban fauna is fearless.

There has been renewal in the cycle of

With the construction of the grotto, the Assumption on August 15th became the major festival in honour of Our Lady. All the parish assembled for an evening torchlight procession to the grotto lighted with hun-dreds of votive lamps. We carried our can-dles in cardboard flame-guards while singing the great Marian hymns in French “J’irai la voir un jour”, “Je mets ma confiance Vierge en votre secours”, “Chez nous, soyez Reine” and in Latin “Tota pulchra es”, ‘O Sanctissima”, ‘Salve Mater Misericordiae”. The evening procession was a revival of an old French practice (observed as well in New France) following the dedication of the Kingdom of France to Mary by Louis XIII in 1638 in thanksgiving for the birth of Louis XIV.

Then came the Nativity of Our Lady (overshadowed by the beginning of school) and October was the Month of the Holy Rosary. This was a repetition of the month of May with devotions every evening in the church, this time centering on the Litany of Loreto and generally with a full service of Benediction with monstrance and incense. The culmination came on October 7th the feast-day of Our Lady of the Rosary which recalled the victories of Christian armies over the infidels at Lepanto on this date in 1571 and later before Vienna in 1683. From that time dated the invocation “Mary, help of Christians” in the litany.

The presence of Our Lady in our homes was also maintained by the daily family

recitation of the Rosary. It was supported by the immensely popular 15-min “Chapelet en famille” daily on CKAC radio at 7 pm with Bishop (later Cardinal) Léger starting in 1950. (So much so that it forced Radio-Can-ada to reschedule its highly successful “Un homme et son péché” in 1953.) The Broth-ers at school encouraged us children to have our parents sign a pledge to that effect. Most did, but not my father who did not believe in such things. But we were not off the hook for all that. We spent much of the summer at the cottage in Lac Simon with my mater-nal grandparents; it was a second marriage for both of them and, as was often the cus-tom at the time, the groom (my grandfather) had pledges to stop drinking and to pray the Rosary daily. So come 7 pm, Grandfa-ther switched on the radio (connected to a car-battery — we had no electricity) and we united our mumbles to the screeching voice of Mgr. Léger. We — the women and children mostly — all knelt with our backs straight, except grandfather who was allowed to crouch on his chair; indeed, as the fateful hour loomed, the adult males became restless until, to their relief, one suggested, “Let’s go for a walk.”

Then the days shortened and our devotions turned towards the dead and the parish visit to the graveyard. The Immaculate Concep-tion on December 8th, though a feast of obli-gation and a civic holiday, never really caught on; Christmas was looming too strongly. 3

The evangelisT16

Tony Whitehead, senior editor Kieran Wilson & Roland Hui, assistant editors

Carolyn Roper, art director, Brian Morgan, guest art director for this issue

The Evangelist is published by

The Church of St. John the Evangelist 137 President Kennedy Avenue, Montreal, Quebec, h2X 3P6

redroof.ca • facebook.com/redroof.ca • [email protected] • 514-288-4428The Reverend Keith A. Schmidt, rector

Father Alain Brosseau, associate

life indoors as well. This winter the family was reunited; my son, our three elderly cats and I were back under one roof. Mona, who was ailing, died in January. In springtime, as I gazed upon Blanche and her ancient compan-ion Paws spooning on the couch, I thought it was time to revitalize the feline herd. We were directed to le refuge pour chats de Ver-dun. It was just before kitten season and there were only two little ones looking for a home, the remainder of a litter of five brown tabbies abandoned on the street in winter. Les chats inséparables — would we consider a double adoption?

Overnight the Pointe-Saint-Charles rest

home was transformed into a circus. Nina and Gomez race everywhere, climbing the screens and the curtains and burrowing under the bed linens. They tear through the apartment in a tangle of tabbiness; wrestling, grooming, and finally sleeping together. Life does not get more abundant than this. As Paws, now of blessed memory, instructed me in the contem-plative life, the Glimmer Twins demonstrate the active life. Everything is new and exciting, a source of wide-eyed wonder.

I hope we can all share their enthusiasm, enjoying the long-awaited season of sunshine and festivals and food trucks. Bring on the whoopee pies and the jazz! 3

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